Thread by @ShunterJack

THREAD:
Shunting is a bit like chess. We've always got to plan ahead.

Friday Day Shift is particularly important for us as we don't just plan for the next day, but for the whole weekend and Monday morning.

Let's run through what happens...
#railwayfamily #railway #trains

Each week we are sent a Carriage Working Notice (CWN) for each day of that week. This is a working timetable showing every train movement planned for that day at each location.

I can't share the exact document, but @RealtimeTrains looks very similar.

Using Saturday as an example, I can see all the trains in the places I'm responsible for (Bognor Sidings, Middle Road and Station).

The CWN also tells us train formations (not shown on Realtime Trains yet for GTR).

From this we can then work out how many trains we need.

Using the CWN I start to make a plan. This arrivals sheet is one I made myself and is an excel spreadsheet.

I put in all the trains that are relevant to me with their arrival time, headcode and what I want them to do next.

As the trains arrive I fill in the unit numbers.

My first arrival this morning was 377438.

It arrived at Bognor at 09.50 at the London End of 1B89. The train divided on the platform and 7438 shunted to Sidings 3 at 10.09.

I have decided it will form the 10.20 departure tomorrow morning.

I now know that I need 44 carriages in Bognor Sidings for Saturday morning. There's only 32 planned to arrive however...

Not unusual for Bognor as we keep spare trains here. They can get called into service to replace faulty ones or during disruption and don't always come back.

In this situation, my next job is to request more trains for Bognor.

We call control, who can then work out where these trains will come from, taking into account all the depots in our area.

So far I have received 4 carriages of the missing 12, with the other 8 planned to arrive later today.

All the planning I've done this morning will prepare the depot for the weekend and all that's left to do is make small changes as necessary.

This was a bit of a long thread, so hopefully I've covered everything.

If you have any questions about this or anything else about shunting, feel free to ask.

#railwayfamily #railway #trains